Analysis finds proportion of female authors and characters fell after 19th century, with male authors remaining ‘remarkably resistant’ to writing women Women in novels have tended to “feel”, while men “get”; women smile or laugh, while men grin or chuckle. An analysis of more than 100,000 novels spanning more than 200 years shows how gendered even seemingly innocuous words can be – as well as revealing an unexpected decline in the proportion of female novelists from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.Academics from the universities of Illinois and California at Berkeley used an algorithm to examine 104,000 works of fiction dating from 1780 to 2007, drawn mostly from HathiTrust Digital Library. The algorithm identified both author and character genders. The academics expected to see an increase in the prominence of female characters in literature across the two centuries. Instead, “from the 19th century through the early 1960s we see a story of steady decline,” write Ted Underwood, David Bamman and Sabrina Lee in their paper The Transformation of Gender in English-Language Fiction, which has just been published in the Journal of Cultural Analytics.No one has been willing to advance the dismal suggestion that the whole story from 1800 to 1960 was a story of declineOn average, men remain remarkably resistant to giving women more than a third of the character-space in their stories Related: Pushing back: why it's time for women to rewrite the story Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2018-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
Catch up on the latest news relevant to libraries, including upcoming adaptations, high profile book club picks, and more. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2024-08-09 15:45:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
The literary world knows Iowa City as home to America’s first creative writing program and a UNESCO City of Literature, but it’s also a landmark city for cinephiles. In the early 1960s, Refocus debuted in Iowa City as one of the largest cinematography and still photography festivals in the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-09-29 08:25:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this
As most people reading this website are aware, the literary media has been in steady decline for the last two decades. So in December 2022, when USA Today announced it was putting its bestseller list “on hiatus”—internet parlance for “dead and gone forever”—most of us saw it as one more nail in... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2023-06-28 14:05:30 UTC ]
More news stories like this
As houses across the industry start recalling staff to their offices, publishing professionals are pushing back against low pay, heavy workloads, and an increasingly stifled corporate environment. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-09-02 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Guardian photographer who captured most of the main events and notable people from the early 1960s to the late 90sThe photographer Frank Martin, who has died aged 89, was on the staff of the Guardian from 1964 to 1997, creating an extensive body of work that covered news, arts, fashion, politics... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2022-04-13 16:01:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this
If you’ve been paying attention to local news, you know the wave of book bans sweeping the nation isn’t slowing down—but people are pushing back. PEN America continues to speak out against censorship; a professor has offered to teach Maus to all students affected by its ban; the Authors Guild... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 15:55:49 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Publishing a debut novel is never easy. 100,000 long-form works of English-language fiction are published every year and even in normal circumstances it’s a struggle to for a first-time novelist to stand out from the pack. But the last 15 or so months have been particularly trying. Full lockdown... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-12 22:02:54 UTC ]
More news stories like this
On Saturday, the newspaper publisher McClatchy tweeted a happy early Mother’s Day to all the moms in the company. “We are proud to support you with our new paid parental leave,” the tweet read. “While still in the process of reaching agreements with some of our guilds, we look forward to the... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review
[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-05-11 12:32:25 UTC ]
More news stories like this
This bigger mass market paperback will make “for a more comfortable reading experience," said Kensington CEO Steve Zacharius, who noted that, with sales of the traditional format in steady decline, he believes the larger size could revitalize the format. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-04-23 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
If lockdown has New Yorkers going postal, the independent journal Civilization has revived the tradition of mail art in order to make us all feel less isolatedIn New York in the early 1960s, the pop artist Ray Johnson pioneered mail art, posting drawings and notes to friends, which he invited... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-04-07 12:08:05 UTC ]
More news stories like this
AT&T Inc. is weighing a sale of its regional sports networks as part of a plan to cut as much as $8 billion in debt by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. The four regional networks, which includes rights to teams such as the hockey’s Pittsburgh Penguins,... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-07-02 19:54:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Prolific author T.C. Boyle paid a visit to the Times studio at the Festival of books to discuss his 28th book, “Outside Looking In.” The recently released novel, which plays off his 2003 book “Drop City,” takes place on Harvard’s campus in the early 1960s and follows the “beginnings of LSD.”... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-04-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Facebook Inc. is pushing back against a German ruling that could make it harder for the social media giant to combine data from all the services it runs in order to target ads even more precisely. Thursday’s ruling, though aimed at current practices, hints at potential troubles ahead if... Continue reading at Baltimore Sun
[ Baltimore Sun | 2019-02-07 22:10:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Corporate sponsorship needs to steer clear of impinging on artistic freedomsNews that investment managers the Man Group is withdrawing its sponsorship from the Booker prize after 18 years has shocked the literary world. The hedge fund’s decision to move on was linked in the press to novelist... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Analysis finds proportion of female authors and characters fell after 19th century, with male authors remaining ‘remarkably resistant’ to writing women Women in novels have tended to “feel”, while men “get”; women smile or laugh, while men grin or chuckle. An analysis of more than 100,000 novels... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2018-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Jack Rabinovitch, the founder of Canada's richest prize for English-language fiction, the C$100,000 Giller Prize, died on Sunday. He was 87. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-08-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
‘There is no copyright in an idea,’ freelance reporter told after complaining that Australian website rewrote her investigations under the bylines of its staffDaily Mail Australia has refused to pay a journalist for republishing parts of her work under its reporters’ bylines, telling her: “There... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-06-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
In the early 1960s, a family of Cuban refugees escaped to suburban New York, where they found a home in the middle-class Long Island neighborhood where author Nelson DeMille grew up. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-06-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this
Among the most-read news stories on our website were our coverage of the increase in bookstore sales in the first six months of 2016 and stories related to book discoverability. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2016-12-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this